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Homeros

Cilt / Volume 4, Sayı / Issue 1, 2021, pp. 35-38 E - ISSN: 2667-4688

URL: https://journals.gen.tr/homeros DOİ: https://doi.org/10.33390/homeros.4.1.05 Araştırma Makalesi/Research Article

LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

Adile ASADOVA *

* Western Caspian University, AZERBAIJAN E-mail: asadova.adile.9496@mail.ru

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9948-2323

Received:14 January 2021; Accepted: 30 January 2021

ABSTRACT

The article examines the relationship between language and culture, as well as the dependence of the language on the cultural level of the people. The attitude to the parallel development of the language with the development of the culture of any nation is expressed, the possibility of the influence of the development of the culture of the people on the grammatical structure of the language is considered.

Key words: Language, intention, culture, thinking, nation, people, grammar.

Introduction

The problem “language and culture” is an integral part of the problem “man and culture”. From this point of view, along with linguists, philosophers, ethnographers, psychologists and sociologists also dealt with the problem of language and culture.

What is culture? From ancient times to the present day, opinions were expressed about the concept of culture, and the concept of “culture” was considered from different angles.

The culture was approached with the idea of being extremely polite, being aware of everything, being very literate and knowing your specialty in detail. Culture also developed in the sense of a detailed knowledge of works of literature and art. Dictionaries also give different definitions to the concept of culture:

1. The sum of the achievements of human society in the field of production, social and spiritual life.

2. The level of achievements of any nation or class in a given period.

3. Literacy, science, knowledge. Inability to behave in society. A set of living conditions that meet the requirements of a civilized person [1, 317].

Culture:

1. The sum of the achievements of the society in all spheres of public life. 2. Civilization (highly cultured person);

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ASADOVA / Language and Culture

Homeros, Cilt / Volume: 4, Sayı / Issue:1, 2021

36 3. High development, ability, skill, high technical culture, physical education culture,

language culture [2, 244]. Culture:

1. The sum of people’s social and spiritual achievements 2. A highly cultured person.

3. Nutrition and rearing of plant or animal species.

4. High level of something, high development and skill [3, 313].

Linguist professor Afad Gurbanov says that the concept of culture belongs to different fields and shows that the “word” is given in a number of terms: folk culture, national culture, family culture, material culture, spiritual culture, eastern culture, western culture, urban culture, rural culture, construction culture, industrial culture, economic culture, trade culture, art culture, music culture, religious culture, political culture, book culture, painting culture, architectural culture, intellectual culture, language culture, speech culture, writing culture, etc. [4, 237].

We add to this line the term “culture of war” based on recent events.

The terms language culture, speech culture, and writing culture are among the linguistic aspects of culture and are the subject of linguistics. The connection between language and culture is very strong. This interaction creates conditions for the development of both. The language of each nation is an indicator of its culture.

Professor V.A. Zveginsev, a prominent linguist and one of the founders of the Department of Applied and Theoretical Linguistics at Moscow State University, approaches the issue of language and culture as follows:

1. The dependence of language on the general cultural level of the people. 2. The dependence of the structural features of individual languages on specific forms of culture of the people speaking that language [5, 248].

The dependence of language on the general cultural level of the people means the influence of the language belonging to any nation on the general cultural level of the people – the development of public consciousness, thinking, economic life, general social development, the general development of language, its grammatical structure.

Current Study

In this case, the development of the grammatical structure of the language is taken into account. However, the approach to this issue in linguistics is ambiguous. Although linguist Abulfaz Rajabli admits that there is a connection between the history of the development of the grammatical structure of the language and the history of the development of the people who speak that language, the role of this factor in the formation of specific events of the grammatical structure of the language is not exaggerated [6, 501].

There is a general connection between culture and language. According to the American linguist Edward Sapir, the history of language and the history of culture develop in parallel. We also agree with Abulfaz Rajabli that the development of culture cannot directly affect the development of the structure of language. However, there is no doubt that the development of culture has a direct impact on the development of the vocabulary of the language. New concepts, new lexemes appear in the language, the language includes words from other languages in the vocabulary. The development of culture also plays an important role in strengthening the norms of literary language.

Each of the peoples of the world has its own culture, which is a national culture. The culture of any nation does not depend on its number. About ten percent of Azerbaijan’s

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37 population is ethnic minority: Jews, Talyshs, Tats, Avars, Thakhurs, Shahdag peoples

(Khinalugs, Kryts, Budukhs), Lezgins, Ingiloys, Molokans, Udis and others. Although these nations are not numerous, each of them has a rich culture and ancient traditions. It should be noted that the language of these peoples is typologically and genealogically different.

There is a strong connection between language and culture. In turn, language creates culture, and culture creates the basis for the development of language. The formation and development of world languages is closely linked with culture. One of the important attributes of a nation, perhaps the first, is the language that expresses the national culture of the people who speak that language. We have shown above the opinion of the Azerbaijani linguist Abulfaz Rajabli that the culture of the people will affect the lexical structure of the language, but will not change the structure of the language. In fact, our views coincided with those of the scientist. However, some time ago we had to study the languages of the Shahdag subgroup on a conference topic. To be honest, it was not so easy. Because the available sources were few and at the same time contradictory. There was an interesting point in the grammatical categories of the Kryts language, one of the languages of the Shahdag subgroup (Kryts is the language of the Kryts living in the village of Kryts, southeast of Shahdag in the Guba region of Azerbaijan, as well as in the nearby villages of Alik, Jack, Haput).

I would also like to note that we got a lot of information about the Kryts language from the book “Grammar of the Kryts language” by Jill Otiye, which is entirely devoted to the Kryts language. In the introductory part of the book, the author gave information about Kryts language and people. Jill Otiye describes the village of Kryts under the geographical context as follows: “About 2,000 people in the Kryts language and their names in the villages of Alik, Jack, Kryts, Haput, located in the eastern foothills of the Greater Caucasus Mountains, northeast of the Republic of Azerbaijan (Guba) at an altitude of 1900 meters above sea level. they speak in dialects” [7, 5]. He then provided information on research papers written in Kryts [7, 8]. The author spoke in detail about the genetic position, linguistic type and grammatical structure of the Kryts language.

The interesting point we mentioned above was that the lexemes that express the concepts of respect in the Kryts language change little in the sentence, that is, these words are not solved differently from other words. For example: “Atasının oğlu-Bəy dix”. The word “bəy”, which means father, has not changed here. In the expression “Oğlunun atası-Duxar bəy”, the word “dix” meaning “son” was changed to “duxar”. Here the word remains unchanged because the ata (father) has more respect than the oğul (son). In the Kryts language, the word “ata” – “bəy” has the highest meaning. They even mean it as big, like a god. In general, in the Kryts language, respect for elders is expressed in the form of appeals. For example: “ay” in the Azerbaijani word “ay uşaq” sounds like “və” in Kryts. However, if they are addressed to yaşlı, qoca, ataya (old, father), they should say “vi”, but not “və”. For example: ay ata - vi bəy.

Conclusion

We come to the conclusion that the culture and national values of a people also affect the grammatical structure of its language.

The subject of language and culture is also closely related to language and thought. Since thinking exists only through language, there is an unbreakable connection between thought and language. The language of any nation depends on its way of thinking, which is an indicator of its general cultural level. From this point of view, all levels of language are connected with culture.

We came across some interesting facts in the book “Folklore and Literary Studies” by folklorist Professor Maharram Gasimli. In his book, the author gives information about the

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38 culture of “Gam-shaman”. It shows that in the primitive thinking of the ancient Turks there was

an unusual attitude to the word, music, musical instrument and its performer. At the same time, emphasizing the lexeme “gam”, the scientist states: “Gam captures the necessary spirit and makes it its own. It seems to us that the pronoun of the name should be sought in the same sense. The phrase “qamarlamaq, kamarlamaq” used in modern Azerbaijani and Anatolian Turkic languages to mean “to seize, to take possession of” is very close to the main mythological-semantic aspect of the historical task of gam, almost preserving its original content” [8, 21 ].

One of the interesting statements of the author is related to the word “qamçı” (whip). Professor G.P. Snesarev, a prominent ethnographer-turkologist, gave an example “When performing a medical function, a gam-shaman finally beats the patient with a whip to heal the patient” from the work “Relics of Muslim beliefs and rituals among the Uzbeks of Khorezm” and said that the word “qamçı” has the same semantics as the word “gam”, which reflects strength. [8., 22].

Interestingly, the word “qamçı” as a lexical unit expressing the same concept is preserved in the vocabulary of the vast majority of Turkic languages.

As we have seen, the cultural thinking of the people is reflected in the lexicological, derivotological, grammatical and other departments of the language, in short, in all layers of the language.

Of course, the subject of language and culture is a very broad one. Undoubtedly, the culture, traditions, values and cultural thinking of each nation will be embodied in the language of that nation, will live in the language of that nation and will be written in its memory. Culture and language are always interconnected, one that provides material to the other and the other that enriches the other. I started the introduction of the article in the sense of culture. I would like to end with the opinion of culturologist Fuad Mammadov on culture: “Fyodor Dostoevsky said: “Beauty will save the world”, but I do not agree with him. There were many wars for beauty. But culture will save the world only if the world protects culture.

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